London
alexandra.coghlan
“You don’t put yourself into what you write, you find yourself there.” It’s a maxim that has guided a writing career that, insect-like, has made itself at home among the lived detritus of autobiography and memoir. In Alan Bennett’s 2001 Hymn and his latest short-play Cocktail Sticks the author sets out in search of himself once more, finding on his quest not only his own history but that of a generation and an age at an ever-increasing remove from our own. It could be cosy, it could easily be glib, but for the most part it’s just funny, and terribly, terribly poignant.To anyone familiar with Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
When the first series of The Hour aired last year, there was a lot of excitable talk about how it was the "British Mad Men". Having sat through series two, I've concluded that in fact it's the British version of Pan Am, that bizarrely idiotic airline series where all the air hostesses were covert operatives for the CIA, and visits to exotic international locations were achieved using plywood props and big photographs of famous landmarks.Despite its superficial attention to 1950s detail (suits, hats, frocks, cars), the more The Hour tries to feel authentic, the less convincing it becomes. Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Made in 1992, this was the first Muppets project after the death of creator Jim Henson, and was helmed by his son, Brian. It's been given a 20th-anniversary re-release by Disney, which now owns the Muppet franchise, appropriately enough in the bicentenary of Charles Dickens' birth.There's the usual mix of puppet and human action, realised in designer Val Strazovec's foggy, filthy Dickensian London, all narrow alleyways and candelit indoor gloom. Michael Caine does a nice turn as Ebenezer Scrooge, the miser millionaire who is given the chance of redemption after being visited on Christmas Eve Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
The Neapolitan Francesco Clemente was born in 1952 into a patrician Italian family, the son of a judge. He studied classics in school and architecture in Rome, became a photographer, and then turned, as a fine art autodidact, to painting and drawing. He has spent substantial time over several decades in Madras, where he had a studio, and in Varanasi, with its continual burning pyres for the dead before they are floated off into the Ganges.Now Clemente lives in Santa Fe and New York, where he moved in the 1980s, working at first with the beat poets, and collaborating with Basquiat and Warhol: Read more ...
bruce.dessau
Nostalgia is not what it used to be. With kids who were not even born when Mick Jagger first shimmied across the stage singing the praises of the Rolling Stones, it was nice to see an audience at the Shepherds Bush Empire, give or take a few young goths of no fixed hairstyle, almost perfectly fitting the expected Adam Ant demographic. Well-preserved women who loved the pop hits, bulkier men who liked the punk phase. I may have missed that meeting, but Antmusic clearly lives onThe end of the gig, however, found both sociological sub-sets united in one of the most bizarre Read more ...
Karen Krizanovich
LOCO London’s "four days of the world’s best funny films" is one of those about-time ideas, because London needs a great comedy film festival. As a warmup, this Saturday 1 December at 6pm, LOCO London and the Hackney Picturehouse are holding Woodystock, celebrating Woody Allen’s birthday with a big screen blow-out of Manhattan – one of Woody’s best. In this fest of all things Woody, there will be readings of Allen’s short stories, standup, jazz and Woody-inspired cocktails - although no one really knows what a Woody-inspired cocktail is, you'll be chasing lobsters in the kitchen by the time Read more ...
Jasper Rees
One has low expectations of Great Expectations. As the Dickens bicentenary draws to a close with yet another version, young Pip must once again come to the aid of the convict Magwitch, once again be raised up from apprentice blacksmith to gentleman, once again fall for the cold, unrequiting Estella Havisham. And once again make do without the first-person narrative that gives him his character. For this latest account Mike Newell, director of Four Weddings and the fourth Harry Potter, has teamed up with scriptwriter David One Day Nicholls, so you can intuit roughly what flavours Read more ...
Sam Marlowe
Cole Porter’s musical spin on Shakespeare demands the fluidity, fizz and acidity of champagne. In Trevor Nunn’s revival, which transfers to London after a successful run in Chichester, it’s more like gelato. It has sweetness, and a rich abundance of detail, but it’s also thick, cloying, and somewhat bland. There’s plenty of stagey pizzazz on display, but it too often feels strained and soulless. The production lingers when it should zing, and despite some fine song and dance, it never conjures either the sexual heat or the showbiz buzz that should set it sparkling.The show takes place on and Read more ...
howard.male
Twenty-first century rock bands have a problem, and it’s a problem that they’ve had for decades: how to stay focused on the rebel oomph of distorted guitars, rudimentary drumming, sorting-out-the-bottom-end bass guitar and – let’s face it – self-pitying, woefully inadequate but raggedly functional vocals without sounding like a relic from a bygone age? After all, if record shops still existed, most rock bands of recent years would eventually find themselves shelved under the demoralisingly dusty category of “Trad Rock”.Unfortunately, two of the bands on last night’s triple bill of up-and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Frustratingly, the ramshackle rail service from Brighton deposits me at the crammed O2 20 minutes into Robbie Williams's set. After the eerie quiet of the airport-like walkways around the perimeters, the torrid atmosphere inside the gigantic arena is a shocker. It's packed to the rafters with women shrieking and waving their arms in the air while their men sit beside them, sheepishly mouthing lyrics. Williams, clad fetchingly in black, is playing in the round in the centre of the O2's huge bowl, and the first song I catch is his recent number one single, "Candy". This frankly irritating Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Any gig is partly defined by its audience. Brighton audiences, particularly Brighton Dome audiences, are usually a lively bunch but tonight’s crowd, at least until beyond halfway through, are still as dummies in their seats, quiet as mice. Looking around is uncanny, like observing a theatre watching a Strindberg play or some such. True, they’re mostly in their fifties but that’s a poor excuse. The last time I saw the Dome this dead was when Ultravox played a couple of years back. Matters weren’t, perhaps, helped by the production company’s disgraceful insistence that the bar – which is Read more ...
Veronica Lee
You don't see much of Arthur Wing Pinero's considerable output these days. Although he was largely contemporaneous with Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw and Gilbert and Sullivan, whose works have stayed the course, his plays have not, with just a few exceptions. But in that weird way these things sometimes happen, it seems Pinero is undergoing something of a resurgence (in London at least), as a production of The Second Mrs Tanqueray has just finished at the Rose Theatre in Kingston and the Donmar Warehouse is to stage Trelawny of the Wells early next year.The Magistrate will be even less Read more ...